The Washington Monthly

November 29, 2004

CIVIL WAR?....Spencer Ackerman is depressed about the future of Iraq:

The January election is now itself on track to deliver what used to be considered the worst-case scenario (but which is now acceptable to some advocates of the war): civil war.

Bottom line: it's impossible to delay the elections because that would cause a decisive U.S. break with the Shia majority. On the other hand, the 20% of the population that's Sunni is now dead set against the elections and considers them illegitimate. That's more than enough people to keep a civil war in high gear.

I suppose the best hope now is that in the end the Sunni minority will back down and eventually take part in the elections — if not in January, perhaps sometime down the road. It's a pretty thin hope, though.

—Kevin Drum 1:34 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (0)

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